20,000 Nazi camps in WWII

In the notorious death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau (left) in southern Poland, 1.1 million people are documented to have died in purpose-built gas chambers. -- PHOTO: AFP

WASHINGTON - NAZI Germany's network of camps, ghettos and other 'persecution sites' in Europe was much vaster than previously believed and had stretched its tentacles across the continent by the end of World War II, US researchers have found.

When researchers from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum began gathering information about Nazi camps for a reference work, they expected 'that we would be looking at 5,000 to 7,000 sites,' said Geoffrey Megargee, the project director for the 'Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945.'

'But the number started to grow and grow and grow, and at this point, we have a working number of about 20,000,' he said.

The Nazis began setting up their gruesome network in Germany in 1933, the year Adolf Hitler came to power, according to the report.

By the end of that first year, there were more than 100 such camps across Germany, run by the paramilitary Nazi groups like the Waffen SS, and the police to 'detain and abuse real and imagined enemies of the regime,' an introduction to the encyclopedia says.

When World War II ended in 1945, the reach of the Nazi detention network had expanded to include sites such as the notorious death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland, where 1.1 million people are documented to have died in purpose-built gas chambers.

During their 12 years in power, the Nazis went on to 'establish a bewildering array of other persecution sites: killing centers, ghettos, forced-labor camps, prisoner-of-war camps, resettlement camps, 'euthanasia' centres, brothels and prisons, among others,' the encyclopedia says.

Collaborationist states 'from France to Romania, Norway to Italy' set up their own camps, adding to the vast network of Nazi detention centres.

Prisoners from all walks of life were shipped to the camps, and hundreds of thousands of prisoners perished in them, either because they were systematically exterminated by the Nazis or because of the harsh conditions.

The encyclopedia also details the persecution at the hands of the Nazis of other groups, such as Gypsies, homosexuals, resistance fighters, prisoners of war, communists. -- AFP